Lies the Diet & Fitness Industry Told You: Part 2 | Will Dove and Dr. Mark Trozzi

Dr. Trozzi 00:00
It makes a lot of sense, as I think you’re pointing out, taking little steps that you can maintain is a lot better than taking radical steps that won’t last more than a few weeks.

Will Dove 00:16
Absolute —

Dr. Trozzi 00:17
— really changing your lifestyle permanently.

Will Dove 00:20
Yeah, and this is where we have to talk briefly about diets versus diet. Never ever, ever go on a diet, it is a metabolic disaster. Because here’s what’s going to happen and multiple studies have shown that people who lose weight on diets 99% of them gain it back. The faster you lose weight, the more likely you are to put it back on, you want to do this slowly, gradually, if you’re you know, if you’re 300 pounds, and you’ve been eating a crap diet, your whole life and you don’t exercise, you should be taking about two years to change that. Literally two years, slow, slow. And as you change it as you would start to eat a healthier diet, start to get the crap out of your diet, you start to do intermittent fasting, you start to get some exercise, you’re gonna find yourself feeling better and more energetic, and the weights’ gonna come off all by itself. You don’t have to count calories, I guarantee you it’ll happen.

Dr. Trozzi 01:14
I’ve seen people like, you know, it fits with what you’re saying, Will. I’ve seen people over the years because I had a pretty strong interest in fitness and still do as well. So I’m, I’m one of your gym buddies, if we ever get to live close enough. But I’ve seen a lot of people over the years, say I want to lose weight, and they go on one of these radical diets, I’m only going to eat carrots or whatever. And what I see is they lose muscle. Yep. And then when the diets done, they go back in their old lifestyle. And now they actually have less muscle to burn their fat. And so every time they do one of these crash diets, they lose some of the tissue that we’re trying to build, and then just keep building the sludge that we’re trying to get rid of.

Will Dove 01:55
That’s right. And that’s the metabolic disaster I was referring to is that the more muscle you have, the more calories you burn, just sitting around, you know, I’m carrying 40 pounds of muscle, it’s not natural for my friend. So I can get away with eating more and not getting fat. Because I got that muscle, which is burning it off.

Dr. Trozzi 02:16
Your body’s using more calories. Yeah,

Will Dove 02:19
Exactly, because you have to be and then the muscle cells have to be maintained. And it takes way more energy to maintain a muscle cell than it does a fat cell. And another book that I just triggered my memory on that people who really want to delve into the details of diet, I’ve given people really simple rules. But I know there’s some people listening who are going to want to go way deeper into it. So I’m going to give you the book that got me started. And you can buy this book online still is it’s been around for the last 20-25 years, written by a guy named Tom Venuto, he was a natural bodybuilder. And he wrote this fantastic book called “Feed The Muscle, Burn The Fat”. And he’s gonna give you details, really good details on the diet that you eat to do that. But what you’re going to discover, once you read it, and you go through all that detail, and it’s a very thick book, is it comes down to if it has an ingredients list, don’t eat it.

Dr. Trozzi 03:16
I want to loop back and just hang one more decoration on the tree of intermittent fasting with you because Paul Marik, who you and I both interacted with really a world leader, pre COVID. And even more so since they launched COVID in intensive care medicine and unfortunately, Dr. Marik wasn’t as suspicious during the first year of the scam demic. And he took two of the genetic modifying injections, and himself has had genetic material injected into his body and had his body producing the toxic spike proteins. And so now he’s a leader in treating the adverse events of the misrepresented injections. And he’s also very motivated, additionally, because he is himself an injection victim. And he pointed out to us, this process of autophagy, which is stimulated by spending a good chunk of your life hungry or intermittent fasting, that, that how that’s cleaning out all the junk and debris and useless material in the body. That includes cleaning out the spike protein. So this these healthy ways of living, are they work in general, but when you consider that more than half of our beloved, fellow citizens on this planet have been violated with this needle. All the more reason to pay attention to this issue of intermittent fasting and autophagy.

Will Dove 04:44
Yes, I’m glad you brought up Dr. Marik because another thing that people might not know about Dr. Marik, is he cured himself of type two diabetes by fixing his diet. So you get type two diabetes, you go to your doctor, your doctor is going to tell you we’re going to be on insulin for the rest of your life. Bull crap, you can fix it, you can cure yourself of it. All you do is eat healthy. And in fact, I sent an email to Dr. Marik just this morning, requesting an interview on that, to talk about exactly what he did. Because, you know, we’ve got this epidemic out there of diabetics. And then here’s an interesting thing. I want to make this clear to because the mainstream media likes to talk about this epidemic of obesity. There is no epidemic of obesity because obesity is not the disease, it’s a symptom. It’s a symptom of something that once again, Dr. Lustig refers to in his book, “Fat Chance” of chronic metabolic syndrome. And that’s the problem. And that chronic metabolic syndrome is what we were talking about earlier, where your insulin levels are constantly elevated. And that’s what’s messing people up. And it causes a long list of health problems, heart disease, high blood pressure, hardening of the arteries, diabetes, and, you know, obesity, but understand the obesity is just a symptom. In his studies, he found that sure, 80% of obese people have chronic metabolic syndrome, but so do 40% of normal weight people. And I had this experience myself, I was in a restaurant where I used to go to meetup groups, I don’t know if anybody’s familiar with meetup.com but anyways, I went to a few meetup groups for a while there, and I was sitting in this restaurant with these guys and there was a guy to my left, who is a success story. He was very interested because he was probably up in the range of 260 to 270 pounds. He knew he was unhealthy. He was told by his doctor he was pre diabetic. And he was dedicated to fixing it. So I gave him a whole bunch of advice. I still hadn’t learned the very simple rules that I’ve learned since then. But he actually followed that advice. And I’ve been staying in touch with this guy. He’s lost all the weight. he’s healthy, he’s doing great, and what he does, he changed his diet. But here’s the interesting thing about that story. We’re here talking about, you know, him being really overweight, and his doctor saying you’re on your path to being diabetic. Meantime, that whole conversation, there’s a guy sitting on the other side of me, it was a skinny guy. And we were most the way through a conversation when he bites in. And he says, Yeah, I’ve got type two diabetes, I’m on insulin. So obesity is not the disease. It’s a symptom.

Dr. Trozzi 07:14
Yeah, though, this is really this is really important information, folks, I mean, we really can live healthier, stronger lives than we have been living in, you know, maybe this is one of the benefits that will come out of the madness we’ve been put through, I mean, provided we can reverse the power grab of the WHO and, you know, bring back the rule of law and sovereignty. And all that is, is we won’t get fooled again, you know, the food industry and whatever we’re now calling the pharmaceutical-Medical-Hospital industrial complex has been leading us down the wrong road. You know, the cure for metabolic syndrome is to change your lifestyle, not to take pills to cover up, you know, the surface markers, whether that be your sugar level at a certain time of day, or your, your HbA1c or your fat content. Those are all symptoms of a core issue that Will’s talking with us about.

Will Dove 08:10
So let’s let’s – I think at this point, let’s segue into exercise and discipline and what it’s really for, because it certainly isn’t for weight loss. And I’m going to something that if folks, if you watch my interviews, something you don’t see is me taking a drink every once in a while, because we cut that out. Why am I doing it? Why am I drinking regularly? Well, it’s because of my cancer treatment, the radiation damage to my salivary glands, so I have constant dry mouth. So it’s actually very difficult for me to talk for long periods without having something to wet my mouth.

Dr. Trozzi 08:42
Plus, I think by drinking a Diet Coke, you’re making us all see you as a mortal, you’re —

Will Dove 08:48
— that, folks, please understand, I said, I worked 14 hour days, I don’t have time to live at the gym, I don’t find my food at some Whole Foods Market, I go to Walmart. It’s just, it’s WHAT I buy. And you know what, I tried to get this concept across to people about changing your diet. And I know that we’re extending the diet just a little bit, but I think there’s a reason that I missed is, you know, it’s everybody thinks, oh, I want to lose weight, so I have to reduce my calories. Not necessarily. You might be overweight, and you’re still just eating your maintenance calories, because what’s happening in your body is your muscle cells are dying, they’re being eaten up by your body to get proteins that it needs. And you’re storing some of the calories that you ate as fat. So you can be eating maintenance calories and still getting fat. So it’s not about reducing calories. If you are overweight and struggling, or if you’re tired or sick or weak or whatever and struggling. It’s not about just about how much you eat. And this is something I say to people and often it kind of hits them right between the eyes and says if you have that problem, it’s not you know, dropping some calories. It’s because you’re eating the wrong food, foods in the wrong quantities at the wrong time of day. And people kinda go, ‘What, is that complicated?’ Well, yes, in a way it is, it’s not as simple as reducing your calories, you have to change what you’re eating, it could change when you’re eating. And it’s, it’s, it’s a whole formula. And this is where we’re getting back to earlier, when I said, small changes in your diet will produce small changes in your body. If you want to make a major change in your body, you have to make a major change in your lifestyle because your body will reflect what you’re putting into it, and what you’re doing with it. So now let’s move on to exercise and what it’s really for. And I mentioned a couple of books already, I’m gonna mention a third one. If you really want to understand the stuff that we’re about to talk about, go and find the book called “Spark” by Dr. John Ratey. And it is the best book that’s ever been done on the benefits of exercise, and the primary benefits of exercise. While there are many physical benefits, the primary benefits are mental and emotional. There is no better antidepressant than regular exercise. And we’re gonna go back to a story from my cancer treatment about that. And folks this story is no BS, this is the absolute truth. When you get a diagnosis for throat cancer, like I have, the very first professional that they put you in touch with is not an oncologist. It’s a psychologist, a psychiatrist. Because the number one side effect of that treatment is severe depression. Everybody who goes through that treatment ends up severely depressed. I’m an optimist. And I was so depressed. Two weeks into my treatment, and honest truth here, folks. I was standing in my garage with a knife held in my throat. The only reason I didn’t kill myself was one my children. I couldn’t do that to my kids. But I had an experience with my psychiatrist. And this was, this was still Oh, man, I was two months at a treatment and still severely depressed. And he gave me this test that measures your suicide risk is 25 questions. So I failed in the test. I gave it back to him. He took a few minutes to grade it. And he turned around, he looked at me said well, this test is scored at a 25, he said anything over 12 and your suicide risk. You score 22 said the only reason you’re not dead is because you love your kids and you exercise. It’d been anybody else I have and I’ve been he said, I’ve been treating cancer patients for 20 years, going through the same kind of treatment you are, anybody else who scored this high. They’re dead. They killed themselves. So exercise, what it does is it balances neurotransmitters and hormones in a way that no medicine can ever do. And it makes you very, very resilient in terms of depression. Was I severely depressed? God, yes, I was suicidal. But I got through it. And I fought my way back from it. And that comes down to the exercise. And was that a difficult journey you bet it was, you know, I had this. My wife, of course had gone through cancer treatment years before. Now she had breast cancer. So the way most cancer treatments work is you’re going to get radiation, and then you’re going to get chemotherapy, you’re going to get chemotherapy, and then you get radiation. Of course that all follows surgery if that’s what you did, but my tumor wasn’t operable, so I didn’t have surgery. The tumor was in the base of my tongue, and it spread to a lymph node over the side of my neck. And if they had removed the tumor, they would have had to cut my tongue out, and people tend to starve to death if they do that because obviously, you can’t swallow. So they couldn’t they couldn’t do surgery, which I came to be very grateful for afterwards, because for a brief time afterwards, I went to a head neck cancer support group and I saw what had happened to the people who had huge chunks of their mouths cut out. And I’m just so grateful today that I wasn’t a candidate for surgery because those people are messed up for life. So anyways, getting back to the exercise, and the benefits there and how it fights off depression. I’m sorry, I kind of lost my train of thought.

Dr. Trozzi 14:18
Well, there’s a lot a lot in the encyclopedia on this subject.

Will Dove 14:25
Yeah….Yeah, cuz that was it. Yeah. And if so was the right I was talking with my wife and her treatment. So she had other than the weeks that she was on chemo, and she went through four rounds of chemo. And you’re you know, most people that go through a round of chemo, they’re going to be sick for about a week. Now, in her case, she found that eating actually made the nausea, it relieved the nausea. For me, I couldn’t even look at food. I was so sick from the chemo and I had a severe reaction to it. My first key round of chemo. I wasn’t sick for a week I was sick for 90 days. And they went through every anti nausea drug in their arsenal, nothing touched it. I couldn’t even look at food, it was just not happening. I got a break of about three days in there. And then they hit me again. Now because it had such severe reaction, they reduced the dosage to about 80%. And I was sick for 12 days. And then by the time I got to the end of that, that was the point where my throat was so burned from the radiation. I couldn’t swallow water, so it certainly wasn’t gonna be eating at that point. And there’s other reasons why you don’t want to eat when you’re going through throat cancer treatment. But I’m not going to get into them because quite frankly, they’re really disgusting. And you don’t want to know. So, yeah…so where I was going with this, my wife, when she was going through her cancer treatment, she was actually still active, like she was going to the gym with me, she was doing pretty light workouts, but she was going to the gym with me, she was occasionally cycling from our house to the Cancer Center, which is about a 20 minute bike ride away. And I had this idea that I was going to do the same thing. Yeah, no, no, what I was going to do was I was going to lay on the couch and struggled to breathe. That was basically what I did for the 10 weeks of my treatment, you know, and that’s the only good thing you can say about treatment for throat cancer is it’s mercifully short. My wife went through seven months of treatment for her breast cancer. It’s 10 weeks, but they give you chemo and radiation at the same time. And you know, it causes that depression. And it causes all that weight loss that I went through. And so when I had to get back into shape afterwards, I think was about two weeks after my treatment ended, I finally felt like I need to move, I need to do something. And I had this 35 pound plate in my garage, and you know, like a weight plate. And I had bought it years ago to weigh something down, it doesn’t really matter what it’s for. It wasn’t it wasn’t worth the equipment, I just had this plate laying around. So I wouldn’t have grabbed it. And I went over the deck and I lifted it for I don’t know, about 40 seconds, I was able to lift a few times pushed it over my head and kind of do curls with it and put it back down. I went back in the house, I just sort of collapsed. So I think it was about a two weeks after that, when I finally went back to the gym for the first time. My first workout lasted five minutes, and I went home and slept for four hours. But I went back the next day, and I did it again and again and again. And the workouts gradually got longer. And a few months later, I was able to do a full hour long workout again, now it still took me it took me a year to gain back all the weight I lost, it took me two years to get the strength back. So that’s how much this treatment kicks your ass. And just to explain a little bit of clarity here, because most of us think of a stage four cancer, it’s going through your whole body. With a throat cancer, it’s different. A throat cancer, stage four throat cancer means you’ve got a primary tumor, and it has spread to somewhere else in your neck. And the reason why they call it a stage four is because if it spreads from there, it’s going to your brain or your lungs. And when that happens, you’re dead. They can’t save you, the chemo that they gave me it doesn’t kill the cancer, it just weakens it and makes it more susceptible to the radiation. There is no chemo drug known that will kill HPV cancer cells. And this is why I said in that interview, if it comes back, they can’t do anything. You know, write your will you’re gonna die. You’re done. So well, actually didn’t know about Dr. William Makis’ treatment at that point in time. So that’s not quite true. But yes, under the treatments that I would have been, no, they wouldn’t, they wouldn’t have been able to save me. So, you know, there was that that physical challenge of trying to get back in shape because I was very weak. And it was it was really tough for me because I’ve always been a very physical guy prior to my treatment. To give you an idea of the kind of shape that I was in, and this is this is not me blowing my own horn, this is me making the point of just how badly this cancer treatment kicks your ass. I started studying martial arts at the age of 45 and decided I was gonna get my black belt. So at 48 I was little more than halfway through my progress to a black but I actually managed to get my black belt just before I started treatment, which was a good time. But I was you know, classes at the dojo were an hour long. And I was gassing out at around about the 40 minute mark I was just so tired. I could barely even lift my arms, which is kind of difficult if you’re a spar and keep dropping your arms. And I did I did so because there was a bit of a history of asthma in my family I thought well maybe I have exercise induced asthma. So I went to one of those sports clinics and I paid them a couple 100 bucks to put me on their treadmill and they you know they put the mask on so they can measure your oxygen exchange and your heart rate and respirations and all that and so they put me on this thing and I came in I told the guy you know he wanted to know why are you here but I think maybe I have exercise induced asthma because I know I know I’m in better shape than damn near everybody else in that dojo. Why am I gassing out forty minutes in. And after he did the test, and he came back up to see me with the results. He looked at me said, well, not only do you not have exercise induced cancer or asthma, but the only people fitter than you are Olympic athletes, which at 48 felt pretty good to hear. Now, the reason why I was gassing out had absolutely nothing to do with asthma. But I’m not even gonna go into it, because it’s not relevant to what we’re talking about. But I did figure it out. So that’s the kind of shape I was in, like, prior to my treatment, just prior to my treatment, I could go to the gym, I could do a full hour long weight workout, I could walk out the front door, and I could run a 10k. And I can say that because I did it, more than once I did it. And I’m not much of a runner either. I’m a lousy runner, but I could still do a 10k not very fast. My time is shameful compared to what you know, actual runners would do. But I could do it. Now, here’s the point of this whole story. I got – you take a guy who was that fit that strong and if you want to understand just how badly this treatment kicked my ass, I mean, you saw the weight loss 30 pounds that came off. Two years, it took me to get back the weight and the size of the strength, it was around about the fourth week of my treatment about halfway through. And it had reached the point where my wife had to push me in a wheelchair, the 200 meters from the entrance to the hospital to the treatment room and back because I couldn’t walk that far. I was that week. So you know, people look at me, and they sometimes they think, Oh, you have no idea what it’s like to be weak and sick. Yeah, I’ve been weaker and sicker than most people ever be until the day they die. I know exactly what weak and sick can feel like. So true. So it’s. So the exercise, it was yes, it was to regain my strength. But it was also very much for my mental and emotional health. And as my psychiatrist pointed out, if I hadn’t been exercising, I’d probably be dead, I probably would have killed myself. I was that depressed. So in this book, John, that John Ratey writes about, he also talks about the mental benefits where they did test in schools. And one of the most interesting tests they did was they had this school that was I think, was a school district in Detroit, not just outside of Detroit. Anyways, it was one of the poorest scoring districts around they have a bunch of poor kids. And you know, on the standardized tests tend to do very poorly. But this radical gym teacher came in, and he started a preschool exercise program for which the kids could get extra credit if they showed up. So you know, maybe you weren’t doing very well on one of your other courses, you could come in, you could do this exercise regimen in the morning. And he got this company to donate all these heartrate monitors. So what he would do is he would get them to run every morning. And he wasn’t measuring them against each other. And that was the cool thing about this, is measuring against themselves. This is because that was really at the heart rate monitors for us is I don’t care what other people’s heart rates are, I care what yours is. And if it’s improving, I don’t care what other people’s times are on that five kilometer run, I care what yours is. And if it’s improving, and they got credits based upon whether or not they improved. So it was it was their own personal progress. It wasn’t, you know, some independent, objective standard they had to meet up to. But here’s the cool thing. Two years later, they were the one of the top scoring academic school districts in the United States. And they went to the international competition, and they beat the Japanese.

Dr. Trozzi 23:00
Oh, well, that really speaks to what you said about one of the main benefits of exercise is the state of your mind.

Will Dove 23:42
Yeah, and that is to me, the primary benefit of exercise, is not physical, it’s mental and emotional. So now we have to talk very briefly about what kind of exercise should do this. Because this is the other reason why people go to the gym and they quit. Because the other type of person who’s going to the gym is guys like me to go to the gym, and they want to get big and strong, and very few of them are pigheaded enough to work out for nine years and gain nothing. So you know, they go to the gym, and they’ve been there for three months, they haven’t gained anything. Well, why not? Well, because they’re, you know, they’re not eating right and partly, but the other problem, and I see this all the time, you know, I’m in the gym, and one of these young guys do it. Are they working out? You know, they’re sitting on the machines texting. So here’s the problem. Everybody knows about frequency, you know, you have to work out at least three times a week. And you do by the way, that’s a really good rule a minimum of three times a week. Everybody knows about duration. You know, a minute of exercise isn’t going to do any good. You have to exercise for at least 20 minutes, preferably longer. But even the guys who are doing that they’re showing up at the gym three times a week. They’re doing a 30-40 minute long workout, but what are they doing? Right? Here’s the missing ingredient: Intensity. They’re not training hard enough. I’m 57 years old, I go to the gym, I’m still working to the point where I’m, you know, I’m breathing hard, and I’m sweating. When I’m done, my muscles are trembling, because I’m pushing myself to failure on every set, I’m taking very short rest between sets. It’s the intensity that’s missing. So if you’re going to exercise, the rule is you push yourself to the point of failure. I don’t care what exercise you’re doing. If you want to walk, if you want to suck, if you want to hike, if you want to go the gym like me, and lift weights doesn’t matter. If you’re not pushing yourself as hard as you can do not expect benefits. And the benefits you get will be in direct proportion to the intensity of your workouts. And that is not just the physical benefits, as these ones do.

Dr. Trozzi 25:52
That really makes sense. Because you’re learning to focus your mind, and have your mind overpower or not overpower, but really run your body to go into a certain type of discomfort, you know, where you’re, you’re choosing to have to work hard, as opposed to doing it only when you have to.

Will Dove 26:11
Yeah, and it’s, it is a mental discipline, it’s not a physical one. Something I’ve said to people many times isn’t. The body will follow where the mind leads. Don’t start by trying to discipline your body, start with disciplining your mind. When you discipline your mind, you can make your body do anything.

Dr. Trozzi 26:33
That makes total sense I, I go to the to the pool in the gym. And I always start with just closing my eyes and being still and choosing a good state of mind to, to begin with.

Will Dove 26:44
Yeah, and it’s that’s another thing, you know, this is something I tell the young guys who are going in and they’re there for the same reason I was there when I was young, and they want to be on the bench pressing 400 pounds. And I see some of these guys lifting, and I’m watching them and going, you can lift more than that. And so what I’ll say to them, this is the problem isn’t here, it’s here, you don’t believe you can lift it. And if you don’t believe you can do it, you’re not going to. And this is something that holds a lot of people back because they’ll look at something like the exercise that I was doing that I showed that video of, and say I could never do that. Who says? I’m 57 years old, I can do it. Are you like 45-50? Yes, you can do it, you just have to train hard enough. Start out by believing in yourself believing that you can do it. The body will follow.

Dr. Trozzi 27:37
Seriously, when you, you know, you talked about the progression you experienced after your chemo. So in a way, I mean, obviously, we’re not happy you had to go through that but at the same time, you learned a lot that we can benefit from the knowledge. So in a way, when you finished chemo, you still had a great knowledge of how to train and how to eat. But you were at a real low point lower than probably most people have ever been in terms of how crappy you felt. And like you say, you went to the gym. You didn’t go to the gym and train for three hours and set records, you went to the gym and you began the progression at a basic level and built your way back up. So for somebody who’s let’s just I mean, it’s hard to pick a tip like sort of a typical person. So let’s just say, let’s say somebody’s got a man or woman they’re 40 years old as a as a as a rough timing. Let’s say they’re not in the worst shape, but they, whether they know it or not, they’ve got some metabolic syndrome. They’re there. They’ve been sedentary for a long time. So now they decide, okay, I’m going to clean up my diet, I’m going to start eating real natural foods, I’m going to start, you know, progressing towards in their fasting, I’m going to go to the gym three times a day. So if you could give them a starting place, like so you go to the gym, what should you do when you get there?

Will Dove 29:01
So let me start by saying, I’m going to answer that exact question in a second. But the first thing I want to say is, maybe the gym isn’t right for you. The first thing you should do is figure out what kind of exercise you like doing. I go to the gym, because I like lifting weights, I enjoy it. I find it mentally very relaxing, because and especially because my whole life I have been in careers that require an awful lot of thought of mental energy. I go to the gym for an hour. And I don’t think about anything more complicated than pick up the weight, put down the weight. So it’s almost a form of meditation for me, and I love lifting weights, but a lot of people hate it. Well, if you hate it, don’t do that because you’re just going to quit because you hate it. So find something you love. And like I was talking about earlier, I don’t care if it’s if it’s walking, hiking, cycling, rowing, swimming, anything tennis band that you find something you love doing that you have fun doing. Go do that. Okay. Now resistance training is in my opinion, the best form of exercise And if there’s scientific reasons behind that I’m not going to go into because that’s a long discussion. But anyways, to answer your specific question, okay, you’re gonna go to the gym. So here’s some basic rules. And this is addressing that intensity. Okay, rule number one, leave that in your locker. You’re not there to text. Okay. I do have an mp3 player. And I have some really nice bluetooth earbuds that I use because I like to listen to my own music, not whatever is blaring from the gym speakers. But I do not have my phone in the gym with me. Absolutely not, it’s a distraction. You’re there to work out so workout. Remember that everybody has a starting point. Remember me going back after cancer, my first workout was literally five minutes. I’m not making that up. That’s not a joke. It was literally five mins, I think I think I managed to do two sets. I can’t remember what they were two sets of something. And I was weak as a six year old girl and was pathetic when I was lifting. And I was exhausted. And I went home and I slept for four hours. But I just kept doing it. And that’s you know that Persistence is key. So once you’re there, what do you do? Let’s, let’s assume that you’re not, you know, post cancer treatment or as weak as a six year old girl, that you’re actually able to go to the gym the very first day, and you can put in like a 20-30 minute workout. So what should you be doing? Well, the truth is, it doesn’t really matter that much what you’re lifting, aside from the general rule of Don’t ignore your legs, don’t skip leg day, that’s really bad for you. You know, especially and you’ll especially be grateful when you get older, you know, 57 years old, I have no joint problems have strong legs that can bounce up and down like a jack rabbit. And seriously, anybody get older, yeah, to be glad you didn’t skip leg day. But when you’re doing the exercise themselves, it’s not so much what you’re lifting. It’s how many repetitions you’re doing before you hit failure. And I have some general guidelines for people. And when I say failure, what I mean is the last repetition you do is the last repetition you can do. You literally could not do another one, and every set should be to failure. Every set, you don’t stop until your body forces you to stop. But how many reps should that be? Okay, so if you’re just starting out, what you want is in the range of 12 to 20 reps, it’s going to change depending upon whether you’re male or female and how advanced you are. But you’re just starting out men and women 12 to 20 reps somewhere in there, you’re hitting failure. If you can’t do at least 12, it’s too heavy. And if you’re going beyond 20, if you can lift more than that is to light adjust the weight until you’re failing somewhere in those 12 to 20 reps. Now, as you get stronger for women, it’s going to drop to 10 to 16 reps. And for men, it’s going to drop to six to 12. And that’s kind of the ideal range. And when you keep training, you will discover that somewhere in there is your optimal range. I wish mine was six, it’s not it’s 12, alright, to get that real benefit. And to get stronger, I have to be doing 10 to 12 reps. If I only do six to eight, it just takes me forever to get stronger. But some guys do. Some guys are able to do like, six reps. And you know, three weeks later, they’re raising the weight again. So that’s a really good general guideline for the set. And like I said, it doesn’t matter that much what you do beyond the seconds with general rule, free weights are best. Avoid the machines. The free weights, anything you can there’s some exercises where it’s almost impossible to do it with a free weight. You know, things like the well you can use like bodyweight you saw me doing those, those lat pull ups. So if you’re wanting to work these muscles down here, where you can do that bodyweight rather than using the machine that you’re pulling down, but there are some exercises that it’s Yeah, almost impossible to do them well with a free weight. But that’s a very small minority of them. You should be doing squats you know, you should be doing. Yeah, but you’re actually here’s a good example of hamstrings. There is an exercise you can do with bodyweight for hamstrings. I did it because for two years that worked out in my garage as a bodyweight when they closed the gyms. But it’s difficult. So a machine is actually one for working hamstrings, where it’s really difficult to do that with a free weight. It can be done, but it’s tough. But as a general rule, lift free weights. And if you don’t like lifting free weights, try getting into something like Oh, or they call it it’s actually really bad for you. But the concept is good when you’re working with body weight. When talking about they have all these gyms for CrossFit.

Dr. Trozzi 34:31
Oh, yeah,

Will Dove 34:32
CrossFit. Yeah, okay, no, don’t actually do CrossFit because the way they tell you to do it, you’re gonna injure yourself because the whole CrossFit thing is set up so that you’re supposed to complete maximum number of reps, you can within a certain time period, and that leads to people using really bad form. And injuries are endemic in CrossFit for that reason, but the working out with bodyweight doing them slowly and properly into a full range of motion. That’s great for you. So if you don’t like lifting weights, will try doing, you know, CrossFit type exercises just don’t follow across with principles of maximum reps and a certain time period, because you’re just going to injure yourself.

Dr. Trozzi 35:10
That’s a good area for people going out like, can you give us some advice on avoiding injuries, a lot of people go to the gym, they go, they’re there for a week or two before they’ve torn a tendon. And that’s it. Okay, what can people do to build up and avoid injuries?

Will Dove 35:26
Okay, so the first thing you do is you start with lightweights. Remember, I said, you know, when you’re first starting out 12 to 20 reps. So if you’re, you know, say you’re sick, you’re hitting 16 reps, you’re right in the middle of that, it’s gonna be really difficult for you to actually injure yourself lifting something that you can rep 16 times, now you can still do it. But the most common injuries in the gym are back injuries. And that’s typically done from say dead lifting, or squatting. And people are doing improper form, and they’re lifting too much. And there’s the benefit. I mean, if you’re start out doing squats, and you’re using a weight, where you can do 16 reps, even if your forms bad, it’s pretty unlikely you’re gonna injure yourself. And this is where you can clean up your form, you know, and if you’re not sure how to do it, you can get one of the trainers at the gym to show you now don’t pay too much attention. Those trainers typically had three to six weeks of a course that was given to them by the gym. And they’re not being trained to teach you how to advance they’re being trained to teach you how to not – how not to injure yourself, so you won’t sue the gym. So but if you’re concerned about injury, then yeah, get one of those guys to show you how to lift properly so you’re not going to injure yourself. Beyond that, ignore them. They know nothing. Most of them, there’s a few of them out there who are themselves, you know, and you can tell you could spot them. They’re the guys who were built like me. And they’ve been doing it themselves for their whole lives. And those guys can actually give you some good advice. But is the average personal trainer you see in the gym, who you know, he doesn’t have any special physique he or she whatever, some of them are even overweight. He’s like, okay, that’s like taking financial advice from a poor person. Take advantage of that data, financial advice from somebody who’s rich, they clearly know what they’re talking about, when you’re going to the gym, take advice from people who clearly know what they’re talking about. But as you asked, you know, injury, yeah, sure, get one of their trainers to show you how to lift properly, because what they’re trained for, is to protect the gym from liability by showing people how to lift properly. So there’s a free resource in most cases that you can use for that. And follow that rule of start out with 12 to 20 reps. So you’re not, I don’t care what that trainer tells you. If he tells you, you can get away with six reps, find a different trainer, because you’re just going to get injured, and you’re not going to develop anything, start out with that 12 to 20 rep range, get them to show you how to lift properly, work on your form before you start dropping the reps and increasing the weight.

Dr. Trozzi 37:50
Again, a really a really nice overview, you know, for all of us coming into the new year, you know, inspiration for people that have had a healthy lifestyle, a really good starting place for people that that haven’t and want to make the change. I know we could. I mean, I could tell on multiple subjects, and I know I go through the same thing when you’re interviewing me, you go to question, it’s like, well, there’s a book about that but what’s the bottom line and I know you’ve really taken, you know, taken measures to give us an introduction on these subjects and give everybody a starting ground and cleaning up your diet, getting enough sleep, becoming regular with your exercise, making sure it’s exercise you like. And if you’re going to do weight resistant training, which clearly is one of the best choices provided you like it, it’s not a good choice, if you don’t like it. You’ve given us some really good starting places for everyone to engage on this. I know we’re gonna dive into a lot of stuff more and actually, I want to do another deep dive in a separate interview into recovering – first of all preparing and recovering from chemotherapy and radiation. But any, anywhere you’d like to wrap up are any words of inspiration, we’re all ears.

Will Dove 39:17
Okay, yeah, I would I’d like to very briefly talk about epigenetics. And this is a subject that I have a great deal of interest in. For those of you who don’t know, epigenetics is the idea that you can actually change your genetic code. And here’s how it works. You actually have kind of two signals in your genes, you have a digital signal, and you have an analog signal. The digital signal is that you know, sequence of amino acids that we all have right, and that forms your genes. And that doesn’t change. That’s a digital signal just like a binary signal for your computer – ones and zeros. You can think of this as a quaternary signal because there’s four amino acids and they get combined in different ways in order to create the genes But there’s also an analog signal. And that has to do with a number of things. The most important one is something called histones and you think of a histone as like a garden wheel and parts of your DNA chain, they wrap around that wheel. And anything that’s wrapped around the histone is actually turned off, that gene is not triggering right now. So the way the analog signal works, and the way you can change your genetic code is by changing your environment. Now I’m using that word very carefully and I am gonna explain in a minute what I mean by environment. You can actually move those little histones as garden wheels up and down that DNA. And you can turn certain genes on and other ones off. So exercise, good diet, good rest, good mental outlook, can actually turn off bad genes and turn on good ones. And this is in part how you can take somebody who’s yeah, Fat, Sick and Weak and prone to disease and sick all the time. And you put them on a healthy diet, and you put them on a regular intense exercise, and they get fit. And suddenly, they’re one of most resilient people around everybody else around is getting flu is getting colds, it bounces off of them. That’s like me, I mean, I hardly ever get sick, my wife and daughter, they’ll get a cold the last for weeks, I’ll get it, I’ll get a sniffle that lasts for an afternoon, and then I’m fine. My body just killed it right? Just didn’t get to take hold. So it’s epigenetics really, that’s at the core of this. And that’s what you’re doing with diet and exercise and rest is you’re accessing that ability of the human body to actually change its own genetic code, you’re not changing the digital signal, you’re not, you know, rewriting your DNA, you’re turning certain genes on and off. So now I want to explain what I mean by environment. And it’s a fairly brief explanation is really important. I’m not just talking about, you know, where you live, and what’s going on around you. Your environment is everything, it’s the foods you’re eating, it’s how you’re moving your body, it’s how you’re sleeping, and it’s your mental outlook, that’s extremely important. If you have a poor mental outlook, you’re gonna have a really hard time with anything. And this is where the exercise comes in. Because as I’ve already said, it is the number one antidepressant, if you’re exercising frequently, you are almost certainly going to develop a better mental outlook. And that is probably the most important part of your environment. If you’re depressed, and sad and pessimistic, doesn’t matter. If you’re eating right and exercising, you’re probably still gonna have problems. But if you can turn that around, and you can become optimistic, and energetic and excited about life, that is huge. Nothing will have a bigger impact on your long term health.

Dr. Trozzi 42:44
Beautiful advice. We’re not we’re not prisoners of our genetic code, it’s, we can modify it and change how it’s read. And what we require of our body and what we put into our body mentally, and nutritionally, and rest. All these things are changing how our genetic code is serving us and allowing us to exist at a higher level. Am I getting that right?

Will Dove 43:05
Yes, and how you change that. And we’re not going to get into details on this, because it’s a completely different subject, and people can look them up for themselves. But there are ways to change your mental outlook. For some people who are religious, it’s prayer and faith, I’m not. But something that’s universal, that works for everybody is meditation, and practicing gratitude. And when I say practicing gratitude is part of the daily meditation that I will do, is I will sit down and just go someplace quietly for 10 minutes – just for 10 minutes – and I’ll run through my head all the things I’m grateful for. We’re – all of us have lost stuff in this war. You know, my own family has been severely affected. And I’m not going to go into details. But you know, we’re having severe issues with my son as a result of what’s going on. So we’ve all lost things, and I have too, but I still have many, many things to be grateful for. And by choosing to focus on those things, you improve your mental outlook. And so I strongly recommend for anybody who’s suffering from, you know you’re down because of everything that’s been going on the last few years, and yeah, you’ve lost friends, and maybe you lost your job and your family won’t talk to you anymore. Start exercising, start eating right, and start practicing just 10 minutes a day of gratitude. and you start to realize how quickly you start to turn things around and you realize, wait a minute, I do have a lot of good things in my life.

Dr. Trozzi 44:36
Yeah. Yeah, that is so, that is so true. I mean, we have an infinite number of things. There’s, I mean, we’re at least cousins well, because this is years ago, I discovered the power of gratitude. And I consider it one of my sort of three pillars of mental health and probably the biggest one. And you know, a lot of times when we have troubles we don’t feel very grateful, you know what I mean? Like there’s, let’s face it during the war, the last two years when I know what the WHO is doing today, for instance, and doesn’t make me very happy or grateful, it gives me a lot of reason for concern and worry. But, you know, when people say, Well, what have I got to be grateful for? Well, like the fact that I can open my eyeballs and see the fact that I can think, you know, I can be thankful for this finger and this finger. And this, the truth is, we have a list of things to be thankful of, that we’re not going to run out of things. So if you say, well, for the good of my own health, not just to express gratitude to God or the universe, but even just for the good of mown health, I’m going to practice thankfulness, you have more than enough material, even if you’ve got problems, think about it, the fact that I can feel my lower body and walk, the fact that I have a roof, the fact that once again, despite the COVID War and all the economic sanctioning I’m under, I have a soft bed, and a loving family. I mean, all of us have a long list, dive into it, take time in that, because when you come out of that, and then you turn and face your problems, you’re going to face them as a much more powerful individual, and they’re going to lose their power over you and you’re going to find solutions.

Will Dove 46:13
Yeah, and that’s something I didn’t mention, when I was talking about the depression I was going through my treatment is I was still working to practice gratitude. And it was difficult because I was severely depressed, and I was sicker than you can possibly imagine. But I can still remember going through that there were through certain things I every day, I was grateful. For example, I was grateful that it was me and not my kids, it would have been 10 times worse, watching one of my children go through that. I was grateful that it happened in summer, that I didn’t have to be going back and forth to the cancer center every day in mid winter. You know, there was still things to be grateful for. And today, I’m incredibly grateful for that experience. And I’ve said this before, I would not be doing what I’m doing. I would not be a freedom fighter. If I had not gone through that treatment, that cancer experience because it made me strong. Not just physically, it made me mentally resilient, emotionally resilient. And without that strength, I couldn’t have done this, because it’s been incredibly hard. And you’ve experienced the same thing. We’ve had to sacrifice and we’ve been attacked, and we’ve had just all kinds of things that we never thought would happen in our lives that we’ve had to deal with. And you got to be tough to do that. And so I’m grateful for that cancer experience now because it made me tough. It made me strong.

Dr. Trozzi 47:43
Amen, Well, we’re so grateful, grateful for you, Will, I mean, we’re grateful for you taking this time today and for giving us really good solid advice on achieving health, we need our help to fight this war. We’re great – I mean, you have I would write a novel about Iron Will, someday, about how you responded to this assault on yourself and the rest of your fellow humans to the just, I mean, you just morphed into this incredible investigative journalist. And so you’re no stranger to the audience at DrTrozzi.org. In fact, folks, you know, you can just type in the search, Will, or Strong and Free, and you’re gonna find you probably already watched and really, even more so directly. Will, Can you tell us where people remind us and I really want to put some links, including links to the books you mentioned with this video everywhere it shows up. But where can people go both to tap into your work and I know a lot of your work has been on the COVID truth and justice front – thank God for you. And also to support your work because like myself, there, the cabal is not sending us cheques for telling people the truth and trying to set people free. So where can people go and also encourage people to support Iron Will?

Will Dove 49:12
The absolute best thing you can do folks to support our efforts is to go in and go to IronWillReport.com and sign up for a subscription. And the subscription fees are incredibly cheap. $9.95 cdn per month will get you my weekly counter narrative news reports. And those are 30 to 40 minutes long. And they’ll get you a whole bunch of exclusive interviews. And I launched IronWillReport.com last year. Yes, the StrongandFreeCanada.org is our other website and you can make a donation there. But what we found was every time the government backs off on mandates, donations have dropped off by 90%. And we know to the point where there’s just no possible way we can continue to run our organization on what’s coming in there. We could not rely upon donations. And so I started IronWillReport.com about a year ago. I go beyond just the covid narrative there, I address a whole bunch of issues, you know, the whole woke culture, non binary, critical race theory, government corruption, we cover a whole bunch of subjects there. And I did it not to put money in my pocket, but to fund this fight long term. And so if you want to help, if you want to support us, go get that 9.95 / month subscription, you’re gonna get a ton of truth in return for it. And that subscription really helps us to keep this fight going.

Dr. Trozzi 49:13
Thanks. Thank you so much, Will. Well, everybody, I think I don’t know about you guys. I am going to take the 45 minutes to go and get some exercise. And I’m gonna eat a bunch of things that look recognizably like food from Planet Earth. And practice thankfulness. Iron Will, we love you. Thanks for everything you’re doing. We’ll be seeing lots more of you. You’re you truly become one of my friends and heroes over the last couple of years.

Will Dove 50:59
And you as well, Mark, thank you so much for this opportunity. They talk about something that is obviously I’m very passionate about it. And the reason I am is because I want – it is not judgmentalism. It’s not looking down on people who aren’t in shape. In fact, like I said, I’m going to write a book, ‘Your Fat is Not Your Fault’, people can set up to fail. I want people to live rich, full, productive, resilient lives. And these are the keys to doing that.